The Birthday Party

Happy returns come to a screeching halt in this 1968 adaptation of Nobel Prize-winning playwright Harold Pinter's ultimate absurdist play. Eking out a tattered existence in a dilapidated seaside boarding house, Stanley Webber (Robert Shaw) finds himself caught in the teeth of a bizarre predicament after the arrival of two new boarders (Patrick Magee, Sydney Tafler) at the estate. The enigmatic duo, who convince the dotty landlady (Dandy Nichols) that it is Stanley's birthday, proceed to barrage the tongue-tied man with a series of increasingly bizarre demands and inane questions (“Why did the chicken cross the road?”) that pin him into a conversational corner. The playing of party games such as blind man's bluff and the receiving of gifts are met with further outbursts, confusion, and strange glee as the new boarders continue their unexplained mission of awakening their target to a new level of existence. Dubbed “a comedy of menace,” The Birthday Party plays like a paranoid schizophrenic's worst nightmare as a helpless man becomes victimized by unknowable forces in the grand tradition of Kafka. Directed by William Friedkin before he went on to later acclaim with The French Connection and The Exorcist, this humorously unsettling film will linger in the viewer's mind long after the final candle has been blown out. Extras include an interview with Friedkin. Recommended. (J. Cruz)